Atwater Village Was Promised a Franciscan Pottery Museum in 1988. The Closest Thing Today Is a Library Case on Glendale Boulevard.

In September 1988 a Los Angeles Times reporter walked through the empty Franciscan Ceramics plant on Los Feliz Boulevard. More than four years after the last shift, the Times described half-finished plates and broken chips of clay still sitting on the assembly lines. The honeycomb kilns that had fired the dinnerware were still standing, though the previous October's earthquake had bent them out of shape.

The same article included a promise. Shurgin Development Corp. was close to buying the 45-acre property, and the company said a museum would carry on the factory's memory somewhere among the theaters and clothing stores of the planned shopping center. The Times reported that photographs, product displays and written histories would tell the story of Gladding, McBean & Co.

The shopping center got built. We found no record that the museum ever opened. Today the site is what the City of Glendale calls a Costco shopping center. The fullest public telling of the factory's story sits about a mile and a half away, in a small room inside the Atwater Village Branch Library. Two volunteers fill it from their own cupboards.

What 45 acres on Los Feliz Boulevard made for 84 years

The factory's address was 2901 Los Feliz Blvd., according to the Franciscan Ceramics Archive. The dishes are the famous part, but they came late. The City of Los Angeles' Northeast LA historic resources survey and the Franciscan Ceramics Archive together trace the site this way:

1. 1901. The Art Tile Company sets up on the site.
2. 1904. It becomes Tropico Pottery.
3. 1923. Gladding, McBean buys the plant.
4. 1934. Franciscan Pottery dinnerware and artware begin production here.
5. 1979. Wedgwood acquires the Franciscan division.
6. 1984. The factory closes after a 1983 decision to move production to Wedgwood's factories in England.
7. 1988. The buildings are razed for big-box retail.

For most of its life the plant made things nobody would put in a china cabinet. Glendale's historic context statement lists decorative terra cotta, faience tile, vitrified-clay sewer pipe, water pipe and drain tile among its products. In 1937 Gladding, McBean moved its Hermosa tile production here from Hermosa Beach. The Eastsider reports that when the Great Depression hit, the company kept going by making sewer pipe.

The first dinnerware pattern was El Patio, sold in six solid colors. The company picked the trade name "Franciscan Pottery" because it sounded like California. The archive dates Apple to 1940 and Desert Rose to 1941, though The Eastsider's story gives an earlier year for Desert Rose. The Eastsider describes Desert Rose as a line often found in middle-class homes. At its peak the Atwater Village facility employed 1,600 people. The Eastsider notes that many of them were women who hand-painted the designs on each piece.

When the Los Angeles operations shut down, the archive records that every pattern was discontinued except Desert Rose, Apple and Fresh Fruit, and production of those moved elsewhere. So any Desert Rose plate made after the closing came from somewhere other than Los Feliz Boulevard.

A factory museums wanted, on a site that never got one

The missing museum stands out because real museums came to this factory's products early. In 1934, the year Franciscan launched, the Metropolitan Museum of Art invited Gladding, McBean to make two art pieces for an exhibit of modern industrial art. The archive says it was the only American pottery invited. In 1951 the Museum of Modern Art chose Franciscan's Encanto shape in fine china for its Good Design exhibit.

By 1988 the developer's own historical consultant, Hatheway & McKenna, called the plant a historical resource of worldwide significance. The firm said it should be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. As the Times put it, a shopping center obviously wouldn't qualify, so the consultant recommended documenting the plant before demolition. That Historic American Building Survey, with 100 archival photographs, was finished in the summer of 1988.

The neighborhood was not united on the project. Ed Waite, then president of the Atwater Residents Assn., told the Times that residents at a recent meeting split evenly. Supporters pointed to jobs and business. Opponents worried about traffic. Nothing in the sources we reviewed shows that a factory museum, plaque or surviving structure made it into the finished center. The documentation from that last summer may be the most complete record of the buildings.

Two volunteers, and a room to the left of the library entrance

The museum role passed to Friends of Atwater Village, a volunteer group that has been collecting the neighborhood's past since 2000. As The Eastsider describes it, the History Room is the little room to the left as you enter the Atwater Village Branch Library. It holds documents, photographs, artifacts and a rotating exhibit.

The current exhibit is Franciscan dinnerware, and The Eastsider reports that it runs through June 2027. A lot of what's in the case came from FAV founder Sandra Caravella's own family. She told the paper:

"Most of these pieces are from my family."

She was holding a fall-themed platter from the Apple line at the time. She also pointed to the Desert Rose pieces she chose when she got married and called them "bright and cheery."

Saving buildings is how the room came about. Caravella and fellow founder Netty Carr met at a meeting to stop the demolition of the Van de Kamp's Bakery building. They later formed a nonprofit with others and worked with then-Councilmember Mitch O'Farrell to set up the permanent library room. "Having this room in the library to display what we've received and discovered has been a beautiful thing," Carr told The Eastsider.

The 1988 promise described photographs, product displays and written histories. Through June 2027, the History Room offers all three, and it does so in the neighborhood the factory shaped.

Three traces you can still find outside the case

The case is the best place to see the dishes. A few of the factory's other marks are still out on the streets, if you know where to look.

The Perlita Avenue apartments are the most solid physical link. The city survey describes them as Minimal Traditional buildings, some with American Colonial Revival touches, and gives 4065 W. Perlita Ave. as a representative address. The survey also says nothing indicates they were built for or lived in by factory employees. They were a company real estate project on land next to the plant.

The seconds shop is the trace most tied to daily life back then. Carr told The Eastsider that it sold dishes with small flaws: "There were some imperfections, but the reduced price was a big draw." The article doesn't give a street number, so the exact building is left as a puzzle for longtime neighbors.

Seeing it before June 2027

The Atwater Village Branch Library is at 3379 Glendale Blvd. Its posted hours are:

• Monday and Wednesday: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
• Tuesday and Thursday: noon to 8 p.m.
• Friday and Saturday: 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
• Sunday: closed

FAV says the History Room and its rotating exhibit are open whenever the library is. The LAPL branch page also lists a closure on Monday, October 12, 2026, so check before you head over. If you have kids, the library's free Halloween tote bag painting on Thursday, October 15, at 4 p.m., listed in The Eastsider's 2026 Halloween guide, lets you see the exhibit on the same visit.

If you want more after the case, FAV publishes Images of America: Atwater Village with Arcadia Publishing, available by mail for a $24.99 donation. The group's Oral History Project, made with local filmmaker Luke Mines, records video interviews with longtime residents and posts excerpts on its website and YouTube. If your family has stories about Los Feliz Boulevard back when its biggest employer was a pottery, that's who to call.

At Kenya Reeves-Costa and The LA Home Girl Team, we think the history of your block is part of what your home is worth. If you own one of the Perlita Avenue apartments or an older house within walking distance of the old plant, and you're wondering how to tell that story to the next buyer, reach out and we'll put it together with you.